Week 2 - Overcoming Barriers with Aeroplanes

"It's hard knowing that the biggest barrier to employment is not knowing the barriers to employment"

Amazing Anhar

Monday - Barriers

This week, as usual, Anhar starts by asking our Y2J cubs how much they already know about today's topic: barriers to employment. After experiencing our weekly tumbleweed moment, Anhar swiftly moves on to give a few examples before probing their minds for more.

The above photo was taken approximately 3 minutes after Anhar's question, most of which was filled with an awkward silence or the occasional cough... however, our group's consistent lack of knowledge about employment topics prompted me to ask them the following:

Are you learning about employment anywhere else?

I had a feeling I knew what the answer was going to be, but to make it a little more visually meaningful I had them make paper aeroplanes and answer in the following way:

     If Yes - throw your planes at Funny Fokrul

     If No - throw your planes at Amazing Anhar

(Video coming soon)

This was great fun for everyone and was definitely not a waste of paper! Unfortunately, the paper they used for the planes was bought with the last of our funding, so there will be no bowling trip this year...


Wednesday - Buzzwords

Buzzwords. We had our Y2J cubs buddy up and describe their partner with 3 buzzwords, one of which was a lie. We wanted to test:

1. Their knowledge of buzzwords
2. Perception of each other
3. Ability to spot a lie

Pretty soon the wild Salem Witch Trialesque accusations of lying started flying around the room. Also for some reason the word "sophisticated' seemed to be repeatedly, and correctly, called out as a lie (why do we have no sophisticated candidates?).

Although very entertaining to watch, it began getting a little rowdy. Methinks classroom mentality is setting in. Amazing Anhar was forced to play bad cop in dealing with the interruptions and regular latecomers.

Moving forward from this, we have decided to split our group in half, one half to come in on Mondays and the other on Wednesdays over a total of 24 weeks instead of 12. This will create the atmosphere of a team, rather than a class and make the groups easier to manage.

Concerns have been raised over whether the Y2J workshops are "too much fun" and with not enough learning about employment happening. We created Y2J to be 80% fun and 20% serious at the beginning and slowly transforming into 80% serious, 20% fun towards the end, but we always make the material as interesting and interactive as our creative minds can conjure.

This is simply because we know from experience how hard it is to get anyone, especially young people to commit to something long term.  When Anhar told our Y2J cubs about these concerns there were immediate cries of indignation, with everyone saying thats what they love most about the program: that they can learn how to get a job in a fun way.

Plus, I am determined for this to be different from mainstream school methods of controlling children in the classroom through the use of fear, i.e. detentions and the threat of calling parents.